On 16 June 1941, as Hitler readied his forces for Operation Barbarossa, Josef Goebbels looked forward to the new order that the Nazis would impose on a conquered Russia. There would be no come-back, he wrote, for capitalists nor priests nor Tsars. Rather, in the place of debased, Jewish Bolshevism, the Wehrmacht would deliver “der echte Sozialismus”: real socialism.

Goebbels never doubted that he was a socialist. He understood Nazism to be a better and more plausible form of socialism than that propagated by Lenin. Instead of spreading itself across different nations, it would operate within the unit of the Volk.

So total is the cultural victory of the modern Left that the merely to recount this fact is jarring. But few at the time would have found it especially contentious. As George Watson put it in The Lost Literature of Socialism:

It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, thought so too.

The clue is in the name. Subsequent generations of Leftists have tried to explain away the awkward nomenclature of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party as either a cynical PR stunt or an embarrassing coincidence. In fact, the name meant what it said.

Hitler told Hermann Rauschning, a Prussian who briefly worked for the Nazis before rejecting them and fleeing the country, that he had admired much of the thinking of the revolutionaries he had known as a young man; but he felt that they had been talkers, not doers. “I have put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun,” he boasted, adding that “the whole of National Socialism” was “based on Marx”.

Marx’s error, Hitler believed, had been to foster class war instead of national unity – to set workers against industrialists instead of conscripting both groups into a corporatist order. His aim, he told his economic adviser, Otto Wagener, was to “convert the German Volk to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists” – by which he meant the bankers and factory owners who could, he thought, serve socialism better by generating revenue for the state. “What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish,” he told Wagener, “we shall be in a position to achieve.”

Leftist readers may by now be seething. Whenever I touch on this subject, it elicits an almost berserk reaction from people who think of themselves as progressives and see anti-fascism as part of their ideology. Well, chaps, maybe now you know how we conservatives feel when you loosely associate Nazism with “the Right”.

To be absolutely clear, I don’t believe that modern Leftists have subliminal Nazi leanings, or that their loathing of Hitler is in any way feigned. That’s not my argument. What I want to do, by holding up the mirror, is to take on the equally false idea that there is an ideological continuum between free-marketers and fascists.

The idea that Nazism is a more extreme form of conservatism has insinuated its way into popular culture. You hear it, not only when spotty students yell “fascist” at Tories, but when pundits talk of revolutionary anti-capitalist parties, such as the BNP and Golden Dawn, as “far Right”.

What is it based on, this connection? Little beyond a jejune sense that Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty and fascists are nasty. When written down like that, the notion sounds idiotic, but think of the groups around the world that the BBC, for example, calls “Right-wing”: the Taliban, who want communal ownership of goods; the Iranian revolutionaries, who abolished the monarchy, seized industries and destroyed the middle class; Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who pined for Stalinism. The “Nazis-were-far-Right” shtick is a symptom of the wider notion that “Right-wing” is a synonym for “baddie”.

One of my constituents once complained to the Beeb about a report on the repression of Mexico's indigenous peoples, in which the government was labelled Right-wing. The governing party, he pointed out, was a member of the Socialist International and, again, the give-away was in its name: Institutional Revolutionary Party. The BBC’s response was priceless. Yes, it accepted that the party was socialist, “but what our correspondent was trying to get across was that it is authoritarian”.

In fact, authoritarianism was the common feature of socialists of both National and Leninist varieties, who rushed to stick each other in prison camps or before firing squads. Each faction loathed the other as heretical, but both scorned free-market individualists as beyond redemption. Their battle was all the fiercer, as Hayek pointed out in 1944, because it was a battle between brothers.

Authoritarianism – or, to give it a less loaded name, the belief that state compulsion is justified in pursuit of a higher goal, such as scientific progress or greater equality – was traditionally a characteristic of the social democrats as much as of the revolutionaries.

Jonah Goldberg has chronicled the phenomenon at length in his magnum opus, Liberal Fascism. Lots of people take offence at his title, evidently without reading the book since, in the first few pages, Jonah reveals that the phrase is not his own. He is quoting that impeccable progressive H.G. Wells who, in 1932, told the Young Liberals that they must become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis”.

In those days, most prominent Leftists intellectuals, including Wells, Jack London, Havelock Ellis and the Webbs, tended to favour eugenics, convinced that only religious hang-ups were holding back the development of a healthier species. The unapologetic way in which they spelt out the consequences have, like Hitler’s actual words, been largely edited from our discourse. Here, for example, is George Bernard Shaw in 1933:

Extermination must be put on a scientific basis if it is ever to be carried out humanely and apologetically as well as thoroughly… If we desire a certain type of civilisation and culture we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it.

Eugenics, of course, topples easily into racism. Engels himself wrote of the “racial trash” – the groups who would necessarily be supplanted as scientific socialism came into its own. Season this outlook with a sprinkling of anti-capitalism and you often got Leftist anti-Semitism – something else we have edited from our memory, but which once went without saying. “How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-Semite?” Hitler had asked his party members in 1920.

Are contemporary Leftist critics of Israel secretly anti-Semitic? No, not in the vast majority of cases. Are modern socialists inwardly yearning to put global warming sceptics in prison camps? Nope. Do Keynesians want the whole apparatus of corporatism, expressed by Mussolini as “everything in the state, nothing outside the state”? Again, no. There are idiots who discredit every cause, of course, but most people on the Left are sincere in their stated commitment to human rights, personal dignity and pluralism.

My beef with many (not all) Leftists is a simpler one. By refusing to return the compliment, by assuming a moral superiority, they make political dialogue almost impossible. Using the soubriquet “Right-wing” to mean “something undesirable” is a small but important example.

Next time you hear Leftists use the word fascist as a general insult, gently point out the difference between what they like to imagine the NSDAP stood for and what it actually proclaimed.

The Dutch Nazi Party was equally explicit: "With Germany Against Capitalism"

He understands the scrutiny, and it is not just because he’s coming back from a season in which he played just 17 games. Not only is it important to him to prove his ankle is sound and his range afield and speed afoot not diminished, it is important to merely be important.

By Bill Maddenhttp://www.nydailynews.com/February 27, 2014Derek Jeter bats during his spring debut on Thursday, against the Pirates in Tampa, Fla. / AP

TAMPA — Maybe if his physical disabilities hadn’t been so stunningly sudden, as if out of nowhere in a career where, until that fateful night of Oct . 13, 2012 against the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium, he’d shown himself to be mostly impervious to pain and injury, there wouldn’t have been the kind of intense scrutiny on Derek Jeter’s every at-bat, every jaunt on the basepaths, every play in the field as there was Thursday in the retiring Yankee captain’s spring training debut.

As it was, Jeter did not have any balls hit to him at shortstop, which, for a while anyway, can be expected to evoke a collective holding of breath on the part of his fans and teammates, if only because the sight of him diving to his left to stop Jhonny Peralta’s grounder in the 12th inning of that first game of the American League Championship Series two years ago, then lying on the ground writhing in pain, remains so vivid in everyone’s mind. As unfathomable as it was that the previously unsinkable Jeter could suffer a broken ankle on what appeared to be a fairly routine play, even more so was the lost spring and then the lost season that followed when the injury still lingered and others further debilitated him.

For that reason, his equally sudden, out-of-the-blue announcement two days before pitchers and catchers reported to Tampa that he would be retiring after this season left us wondering: Does Jeter know something that we don’t? And it is why Thursday seemed like an autopsy, as will every succeeding game.

Thursday, it was his running that drew the most dissecting, in particular the ground ball he hit to third base in the fourth inning and appeared to beat out. It didn’t matter that first base umpire Tom Hallion ruled otherwise. It had been vintage Jeter, running full tilt, just making the play as close as it was.

“Was I safe?” he asked afterward. When told it appeared he was, he quipped: “Why didn't Joe throw the flag?”

Joe Girardi noted that it wasn’t an instant replay game, but confessed he did go back to check the replay anyway. More to the point, Girardi said, Jeter looked good.

“He moved free and easy today,” the manager said. “It was good to see him run so well because that was what was most noticeable to me last year.”

For Jeter, it was just being back on the ballfield in real game action. In the past, he had always downplayed spring training, but this is clearly different — a last spring in which he is not taking anything for granted. Though Jeter could joke about not getting the call from Hallion at first base, just being able to play again with his old abandon was a really big deal.

“Everybody says spring training is too long,” Jeter said, “but if you miss a whole spring training, you realize why it is so long.

So he understands the scrutiny, and it is not just because he’s coming back from a season in which he played just 17 games. Not only is it important to him to prove his ankle is sound and his range afield and speed afoot not diminished, it is important to merely be important.

“If I thought I wasn’t an important player on this team, I would have left a long time ago,” Jeter said. “My mind-set has always remained the same.”

And in that respect, he does not talk about any milestones he can still achieve in this last season. He is already the only player besides Willie Mays to have at least 3,000 hits, 250 homers, 300 stolen bases and 1,200 RBI in his career, already the Yankees’ all-time leader in hits, stolen bases and games played. With 120 more hits, he will surpass Hall of Famers Paul Molitor, Carl Yastrzemski, Honus Wagner and Cap Anson into sixth place on the all-time list, and with 74 more runs scored he will surpass Tris Speaker, Lou Gehrig, Alex Rodriguez* and Stan Musial to take ninth on that list.

All of those achievements would make for a nice topping on a first-ballot Hall of Fame career. But Jeter has gotten used to rubbing elbows with the game’s immortals, and while it’s been cool, it’s never been what he’s all about. I suspect if he would ever divulge the one number he would want to attain in this, his last year as a player, it would be six — as in a sixth world championship.

Because that would mean he was still an important player — right to the end.

Future historians will likely be flummoxed by the moment we’re living in. In what amounts to less than a blink of an eye in the history of Western civilization, homosexuality has gone from a diagnosed mental disorder to something to be celebrated — or else.

Indeed, the rush to mandatory celebration is so intense, refusal is now considered tantamount to a crime. And, in some rare instances, an actual crime if the right constable or bureaucrat concludes that you have uttered “hate speech.”

Or, if you refuse to bake a gay couple a cake for their wedding. That was the horror story that sparked much of this foofaraw.

Arizona’s proposed SB 1062 would have amended the state’s 15-year-old Religious Freedom Restoration Act in a minor way so as to cover businesses. Arizona’s religious-freedom statute was modeled on a similar federal law signed by Bill Clinton after passing with large bipartisan majorities in both houses. It would have allowed small businesses to decline work that violated their consciences, unless the government could show a compelling reason why such refusal was unreasonable or unjust.

Speaking of unreasonableness, according to ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser, if Arizona allows bakers to refuse to bake cakes for gay couples, gays may have to wear “yellow stars” like the Jews of Nazi Germany. It would be Jim Crow for gays according to, well, too many people to list.

Now lest you get the wrong impression, I am no opponent of gay marriage. I would have preferred a compromise on civil unions, but that ship sailed. The country, never mind the institution of marriage, has far bigger problems than gays settling down, filing joint tax returns, and arguing about whose turn it is to do the dishes. By my lights it’s progress that gay activists and left-wingers are celebrating the institution of marriage as essential. Though I do wish they’d say that more often about heterosexual marriage, too.

But I find the idea that government can force people to violate their conscience without a compelling reason repugnant. I agree with my friend, columnist Deroy Murdock. He thinks private businesses should be allowed to serve whomever they want. Must a gay baker make a cake for the hateful idiots of the Westboro Baptist Church? Must he write “God hates fags!” in the icing?

The ridiculous invocations of Jim Crow are utterly ahistorical, by the way. Jim Crow was state-enforced, and businesses that wanted to serve blacks could be prosecuted. Let the market work and the same social forces that have made homosexuality mainstream will make refusing service to gays a horrible business decision — particularly in the wedding industry!

When August “Gussie” Busch, the CEO of Budweiser, bought the St. Louis Cardinals in 1953, he was vexed by the Brooklyn Dodgers’ success, which was due in large part to Jackie Robinson. He asked Cardinals executives how many blacks they were cultivating, and when they said “None,” he was appalled. “How can it be the great American game if blacks can’t play? Hell, we sell beer to everyone!” he exclaimed. The next year the Cardinals had a black first baseman, Tom Alston.

In 2000, Jonathan Rauch, a (gay) brilliant intellectual and champion of gay marriage, wrote a wonderful essay on “hidden law,” which he defined as “the norms, conventions, implicit bargains, and folk wisdoms that organize social expectations, regulate everyday behavior, and manage interpersonal conflicts.” Basically, hidden law is the unwritten legal and ethical code of civil society. Abortion, assisted suicide, and numerous other hot-button issues were once settled by people doing right as they saw it without seeking permission from the government.

“Hidden law is exceptionally resilient,” Rauch observed, “until it is dragged into politics and pummeled by legalistic reformers.” That crowd believes all good things must be protected by law and all bad things must be outlawed.

As society has grown more diverse (a good thing) and social trust has eroded (a bad thing), the authority of hidden law has atrophied. Once it was understood that a kid’s unlicensed lemonade stand, while technically “illegal,” was just fine. Now kids are increasingly asked, “Do you have a permit for this?”

Gay activists won the battle for hidden law a long time ago. If they recognized that, the sane response would be, “You don’t want my business because I’m gay? Go to hell,” followed by a vicious review on Yelp. The baker would pay a steep price for a dumb decision, and we’d all be spared a lot of stupid talk about yellow stars.

Henry Kissinger once pointed out that since Peter the Great, Russia had been expanding at the rate of one Belgium per year. All undone, of course, by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which Russian President Vladimir Putin called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.”

The response? The E.U. dithers and Barack Obama slumbers. After near- total silence during the first three months of Ukraine’s struggle for freedom, Obama said on camera last week that in his view Ukraine is no “Cold War chessboard.”

Unfortunately, this is exactly what it is for Putin. He wants Ukraine back.

Obama wants stability, the New York Times reports, quoting internal sources. He sees Ukraine as merely a crisis to be managed rather than an opportunity to alter the increasingly autocratic trajectory of the region, allow Ukrainians to join their destiny to the West and block Russian neo-imperialism.

Sure, Obama is sympathetic to democracy. But it must arise organically, from internal developments. “These democratic movements will be more sustainable if they are seen as . . . coming from within these societies,” says deputy national security adviser Benjamin Rhodes. Democracy must not be imposed by outside intervention but develop on its own.

But Ukraine is never on its own. Not with a bear next door. American neutrality doesn’t allow an authentic Ukrainian polity to emerge. It leaves Ukraine naked to Russian pressure.

What Obama doesn’t seem to understand is that American inaction creates a vacuum. His evacuation from Iraq consigned that country to Iranian hegemony, just as Obama’s writing off Syria invited in Russia, Iran and Hezbollah to reverse the tide of battle.

This is no dietary hygiene campaign. This is a message to Kiev: We can shut down your agricultural exports today, your natural gas supplies tomorrow. We can make you broke and we can make you freeze.

Kissinger once also said, “In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.” Either Ukraine will fall to Russian hegemony or finally determine its own future — if America balances Russia’s power.

How? Start with a declaration of full-throated American support for Ukraine’s revolution. Follow that with a serious loan/aid package — say, replacing Moscow’s $15 billion — to get Ukraine through its immediate financial crisis (the announcement of a $1 billion pledge of U.S. loan guarantees is a good first step). Then join with the E.U. to extend a longer substitute package, preferably through the International Monetary Fund.

Secretary of State John Kerry says Russian intervention would be a mistake. Alas, any such declaration from this administration carries the weight of a feather. But better that than nothing. Better still would be backing these words with a naval flotilla in the Black Sea.

Whether anything Obama says or does would stop anyone remains questionable. But surely the West has more financial clout than Russia’s kleptocratic extraction economy that exports little but oil, gas and vodka.

The point is for the United States, leading Europe, to counter Russian pressure and make up for its blandishments/punishments until Ukraine is on firm financial footing.

Yes, $15 billion is a lot of money. But it’s less than one-half of one-tenth of 1 percent of the combined E.U. and U.S. GDP. And expending treasure is infinitely preferable to expending blood. Especially given the strategic stakes: Without Ukraine, there’s no Russian empire.

Putin knows that. Which is why he keeps ratcheting up the pressure. The question is, can this administration muster the counterpressure to give Ukraine a chance to breathe?

The many jaundiced assessments of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on the fifth anniversary of its enactment were understandable, given that the sluggish recovery, now drowsing through the second half of its fifth year, is historically anemic. Still, bleak judgments about the stimulus spending miss the main point of it, which was to funnel a substantial share of its money to unionized, dues-paying, Democratic-voting government employees. Hence the stimulus succeeded. So there.

This illustrates why it is so sublime to be a liberal nowadays. Viewed through the proper prism, most liberal policies succeed because they can hardly fail. Each achieves one or both of two objectives — making liberals feel good about themselves and being good to liberal candidates.

Consider Barack Obama’s renewed anxiety about global warming, increasingly called “climate change” during the approximately 15 years warming has become annoyingly difficult to detect. Secretary of State John Kerry, our knight of the mournful countenance, was especially apocalyptic recently when warning that climate change is a “weapon of mass destruction.” Like Iraq’s?

When a politician says, concerning an issue involving science, that the debate is over, you may be sure the debate is rolling on and not going swimmingly for his side. Obama is, however quite right that climate change is a fact. The climate is always changing: It is not what it was during theMedieval Warm Period (ninth to 13th centuries) or the Little Ice Age (about 1500-1850).

In Indonesia, Kerry embraced Obama’s “Shut up, he explained” approach to climate discussion: “The science of climate change is leaping out at us like a scene from a 3-D movie.” Leaping scenes? The “absolutely certain” science is “something that we understand with absolute assurance of the veracity of that science.” And “kids at the earliest age can understand.” No wonder “97 percent” — who did the poll? — of climate scientists agree. When a Nazi publishing company produced “100 Authors Against Einstein,” the target of this argument-by-cumulation replied: “Were I wrong, one professor would have been quite enough.”

Climate alarmism validates the progressive impulse to micromanage others’ lives — their light bulbs, shower heads, toilets, appliances, automobiles, etc. Although this is a nuisance, it distracts liberals from more serious mischief. And conservatives incensed about Obama’s proposed $1 billion “climate resilience fund” — enough for nearly two Solyndra-scale crony-capitalism debacles — should welcome an Obama brainstorm that costs only a single billion.

Besides, the “resilience” fund will succeed. It will enhance liberals’ self-esteem — planet-saving heroism is not chopped liver — and will energize the climate-alarmist portion of the Democratic base for November’s elections.

Concerning that portion, there will now be a somewhat awkward pause in the chorus of liberal lamentations about there being “too much money” in politics because of wealthy conservatives. During this intermission, the chorus will segue into hosannas of praise for liberal billionaire Tom Steyer. The New York Times says he plans to solicit $50 million from similarly situated liberals, and to match this with $50 million of his own, and to spend the pile to “pressure federal and state officials to enact climate change measures through a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers.” The Times says Steyer’s organization, NextGen Climate Action, is “among the largest outside groups in the country, similar in scale to the conservative political network overseen by Charles and David Koch.”

Conservatives should be serene about people exercising their constitutional right to spend their own money to disseminate political speech, including the speech of people who associate in corporate forms for political advocacy. The Supreme Court’s excellent 2010Citizens Unitedruling, the mention of which sends liberals to their fainting couches, affirmed this right.

Still, there is a semantic puzzle: What are such “outside groups” outside of? Not the political process — unless the process is the private preserve of the political parties. Liberal campaign finance scolds seem to think so. Applying their mantra that “money is not speech,” they have written laws restricting contributions to parties, with the predicted effect of driving money into “outside groups.” This is redundant evidence of why the Law of Unintended Consequences might better be called the Law of Unending Liberal Regrets.

The mainstream press has justified its lack of coverage over the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups because there's been no "smoking gun" tying President Obama to the scandal. This betrays a remarkable, if not willful, failure to understand abuse of power. The political pressure on the IRS to delay or deny tax-exempt status for conservative groups has been obvious to anyone who cares to open his eyes. It did not come from a direct order from the White House, but it didn't have to.

First, some background: On Jan. 21, 2010, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Citizens Unitedv. FEC upholding the right of corporations and unions to make independent expenditures in political races. Then, on March 26, relying on Citizens United, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the rights of persons (including corporations) to pool resources for political purposes. This allowed the creation of "super PACs" as well as corporate contributions to groups organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code that spend in political races.

The reaction to Citizens United was no secret. Various news outlets such as CNN noted that "Democrats fear the decision has given the traditionally pro-business GOP a powerful new advantage."

The 501(c)(4) groups in question are officially known as "social-welfare organizations." They have for decades been permitted to engage in political activity under IRS rules, so long as their primary purpose (generally understood to be less than 50% of their activity) wasn't political. They are permitted to lobby without limitation and are not required to disclose their donors. The groups span the political spectrum, from the National Rifle Association to Common Cause to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. If forced out of 501(c)(4) status, these nonprofit advocacy groups would have to reorganize as for-profit corporations and pay taxes on donations received, or reorganize as "political committees" under Section 527 of the IRS Code and be forced to disclose their donors.

Now consider the following events, all of which were either widely reported, publicly released by officeholders or revealed later in testimony to Congress. These are the dots the media refuse to connect:

• Jan. 27, 2010: President Obama criticizes Citizens United in his State of the Union address and asks Congress to "correct" the decision.

• Feb. 11, 2010: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) says he will introduce legislation known as the Disclose Act to place new restrictions on some political activity by corporations and force more public disclosure of contributions to 501(c)(4) organizations. Mr. Schumer says the bill is intended to "embarrass companies" out of exercising the rights recognized inCitizens United. "The deterrent effect should not be underestimated," he said.

• Soon after, in March 2010, Mr. Obama publicly criticizes conservative 501(c)(4) organizations engaging in politics. In his Aug. 21 radio address, he warns Americans about "shadowy groups with harmless sounding names" and a "corporate takeover of our democracy."

• Sept. 28, 2010: Mr. Obama publicly accuses conservative 501(c)(4) organizations of "posing as not-for-profit, social welfare and trade groups." Max Baucus, then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asks the IRS to investigate 501(c)(4)s, specifically citing Americans for Job Security, an advocacy group that says its role is to "put forth a pro-growth, pro-jobs message to the American people."

• April 2011: White House officials confirm that Mr. Obama is considering an executive order that would require all government contractors to disclose their donations to politically active organizations as part of their bids for government work. The proposal is later dropped amid opposition across the political spectrum.

• March 12, 2012: The same seven Democrats write another letter asking for further investigation of conservative 501(c)(4)s, claiming abuse of their tax status.

• July 27, 2012: Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) writes one of several letters to then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman seeking a probe of nine conservative groups, plus two liberal and one centrist organization. In 2013 testimony to the HouseOversight and Government Reform Committee, former IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller describes Sen. Levin as complaining "bitterly" to the IRS and demanding investigations.

• Aug. 31, 2012: In another letter to the IRS, Sen. Levin calls its failure to investigate and prosecute targeted organizations "unacceptable."

• Dec. 14, 2012: The liberal media outlet ProPublica receives Crossroads GPS's 2010 application for tax-exempt status from the IRS. Because the group's tax-exempt status had not been recognized, the application was confidential. ProPublica publishes the full application. It later reports that it received nine confidential pending applications from IRS agents, six of which it published. None of the applications was from a left-leaning organization.

• April 9, 2013: Sen. Whitehouse convenes the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism to examine nonprofits. He alleges that nonprofits are violating federal law by making false statements about their political activities and donors and using shell companies to donate to super PACs to hide donors' identities. He berates Patricia Haynes, then-deputy chief of Criminal Investigation at the IRS, for not prosecuting conservative nonprofits.

• May 10, 2013: Sen. Levin announces that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will hold hearings on "the IRS's failure to enforce the law requiring that tax-exempt 501(c)(4)s be engaged exclusively in social welfare activities, not partisan politics." Three days later he postpones the hearings when Lois Lerner (then-director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division) reveals that the IRS had been targeting and delaying the applications of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

• Nov. 29, 2013: The IRS proposes new rules redefining "political activity" to include activities such as voter-registration drives and the production of nonpartisan legislative scorecards to restrict what the agency deems as excessive spending on campaigns by tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups. Even many liberal nonprofits argue that the rule goes too far in limiting their political activity—but the main target appears to be the conservative 501(c)(4)s that have so irritated Democrats.

• Feb. 13, 2014: The Hill newspaper reports that "Senate Democrats facing tough elections this year want the Internal Revenue Service to play a more aggressive role in regulating outside groups expected to spend millions of dollars on their races."

In 1170, King Henry II is said to have cried out, on hearing of the latest actions of the Archbishop of Canterbury, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" Four knights then murdered the archbishop. Many in the U.S. media still willfully refuse to see anything connecting the murder of the archbishop to any actions or abuse of power by the king.

Mr. Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, is chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics.

UNC's Marcus Paige makes the winning basket as N.C. State's T.J. Warren defends in the final second of overtime to give the Tar Heels an 85-84 vitory at PNC Arena in Raleigh.ETHAN HYMAN — ehyman@newsobserver.com |Buy Photo

It was an AAU tournament in Indianapolis, and Johnson's team was about to face Paige's team. This was before Johnson had committed to Carolina, so he wasn't fully up to date on the Tar Heel commitment list.

"Hey," one of Johnson's teammates told him during warmups, "that other team has a player who is going to North Carolina."

Johnson craned his neck at the other end of the court, surveying the opposition. He gave each of them a once-over, then turned back to his teammate. "Really?" he said, a little incredulously. "Which one?"

After watching a little bit more of warmups, Johnson declared he knew which player was Chapel Hill bound: one of Paige's teammates.

Then the game started, Paige scored "about 40 points," according to Johnson, and Johnson knew exactly which player was going to Carolina.

Then, in the first day of summer pickup after the freshmen arrived on campus, with NBA players in the game and several of the freshmen on the court, the pickup battle went to game point.

"That's when I knew Marcus was for real," James says. And why is that?

"He dunked on Jackson Simmons on the very first day of pickup on game point," James said. "And I was like, 'Oh man, that little dude's got bounce.'"

Simmons, showing veteran moxie, was already out of the locker room and on the bus by the time this story was being told. Unfortunately for him, several teammates verified it.

Paige was still around, probably preparing to dive into a big plate full of PNC Arena brownies. The Iowa native was named second-team Academic All-America in his spare time last week (when he wasn't helping Carolina to four wins in eight days), so he of course recalled the play with perfect detail.

"Kendall (Marshall) was guarding me," he said. These are things that happen in the summer in the Smith Center--you see pickup games involving Kendall Marshall guarding Marcus Paige. "He tried to force me baseline, because that's the new thing in the NBA, to force everything baseline. So I got it backdoor a little bit, and Jackson was under the rim, and my young high school legs were able to get me to the rim.

"Honestly, it took me a little while to believe it had happened."

Sort of like every Carolina fan spent late Wednesday night wondering if that had really just happened, if Paige had really just poured in 35 points, including 10 of Carolina's 14 points in overtime and 17 of Carolina's last 21 points overall, doing it all while being locked in one of the greatest one-on-one battles in recent Tar Heel history against NC State's T.J. Warren.

He also found time to hit the game-winner, a length of the court dash that capped a comeback from six points down with 90 seconds left in overtime and immediately goes right beside Ed Cota's baseline floater in 1997 and Dudley Bradley's steal and dunk in 1979 among Wolfpack soul-crushers in Raleigh. It must have been especially infuriating for the Wolfpack fan who had to deal with the loss without his can of dip, which he had hurled at the Tar Heels during pregame warmups. It rolled across the court and came to rest near Nate Britt.

"Yes," Britt confirmed after the game, "that's the first time that has ever happened to me."

Here's the thing: Paige is an incredibly smart player. With Carolina inbounding the ball with 1.5 seconds left in a tie game in regulation, it was Paige who went directly to official Les Jones. "We're going to call timeout on the catch," he told Jones. The Tar Heel play was to throw the ball to midcourt and call timeout to set up a potential winning play. Paige told the official the plan because, who knows, an extra tenth of a second of anticipation on the whistle might be the difference between winning and losing.

It was Paige who, with 7.7 seconds left, heard in his head the instructions of Roy Williams. Imagine this--Williams had no timeouts left. But it didn't matter, because Paige knew what his head coach would say: "Coach always says, 'If there are more than seven seconds left, attack and make something happen," Paige said. There was no time to think about this. Warren made a go-ahead free throw, Paige took the inbounds pass, and he had to know what to do right away. No time to consider the options. Just play.

Then watch the tape after his game-winner. It was Paige, among all five Tar Heels on the court, who located the one State player who could win the game--T.J. Warren. Paige is knocked to the deck, gets off the floor, runs back into the play, signals the defense, and then gets a hand in Warren's face, all in less than 0.9 seconds.

We do not even have time to talk about his absurd first half steal, when he tipped the ball back toLeslie McDonald while flying out of bounds at midcourt. There is no time for that. Sometime later, maybe we can mention it.

So he is an incredibly smart player. But haven't we reached the point where just calling him a smart player is doing him a disservice? Marcus Paige is, as Roy Williams would say, really freaking good.

"There are times like today when he's hot," said James Michael McAdoo, who quietly made an important play on the game-winner when he sealed off Kyle Washington from getting to the rim defensively. "There's that moment of silence when he lets the ball go and it's in the air. Then it tickles the twine, and you're just like, 'Go, Marcus.'"

I remember the first time I saw Marcus Paige, in the summer of 2012. It was in the hallway at the Smith Center and he walked by wearing a backpack and sweats and I thought maybe he was a student intern in the athletic communications office. I stopped by the basketball office and chatted with Joe Holladay about the new freshmen.

"Have you seen Marcus?" the former Tar Heel assistant coach said.

I gave him a concerned look, not willing to say it but wondering if he was really sure that this kid with the backpack could play at the ACC level.

"I know," Holladay said with a grin. "He's going to be an All-American before he leaves here."

The coaching staff, it seems, knew it all along. But there was a time during his freshman season when Paige thought that perhaps he was out of his depth in the Atlantic Coast Conference. He started his first college season slowly, with the turnovers and missed shots accumulating.

"I owe a lot—a lot—to Coach Williams," Paige said after Wednesday's game. "When everyone was doubting me, no one had more confidence in me than him. He stuck with me through everything and has always instilled confidence in me, and that's why I play confidently on the court.

"When I was struggling, I would go in and talk to him a lot. He told me other guys have struggled. He told me Ty (Lawson) struggled, and Kendall struggled, and that there was no one he wanted running his team other than me. And that's what helped me get through it."

Five minutes after Marcus Paige pierced NC State's heart, with his team gathered around him, Roy Williams addressed his 10-in-a-row Tar Heels. "Leslie, who is your favorite North Carolina player?" he asked Leslie McDonald, whose foul at the end of regulation looked disastrous at the time.

"Marcus Paige," McDonald replied of the player whose incredible performance had saved the game.

Ten minutes after Marcus Paige pierced NC State's heart, the hero was called back onto the PNC Arena floor for an ACC Network interview. Virtually the only people remaining were Tar Heel fans, except for one very lonely Wolfpack fan seated near the midcourt interview location. "Hey Marcus Paige," he shouted into a quiet arena, "you are..." and then he described what can often be found in some of the grassy areas around NC State's campus.

Paige looked directly at the angry fan, raised one eyebrow, and gave him a big smile. Then he started his postgame interview.

"I had some kind words for them on the way out, but they didn't have any kind words for me," Paige said later. "It's such a great feeling to go back out there and they're still sitting there angry. You don't have to say anything. You just know, 'Hey, you just lost by one point. Have a good night.'"

By now, it was 30 minutes after Marcus Paige pierced NC State's heart. Paige was still in full Carolina blue uniform, shoes still tied, jersey still on. His right leg was bouncing up and down unconsciously, a sign of how much adrenaline was still pumping. He was more or less alone for the first time in the last half-hour. This was, Paige said, the first time he had hit a shot like that.